How to find back stack activities in an android application?

Question

I have an application with activities back stack A -> B -> C -> D -> E. Now at activity E, I want to know the back stack activities that I navigated from. How do I find this??

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 03 '11 at 09:32

6

The code below can be used to extract all the tasks and the top activity within each task in the back stack

ActivityManager m = (ActivityManager) ctx.getSystemService( ctx.ACTIVITY_SERVICE );
List<RunningTaskInfo> runningTaskInfoList =  m.getRunningTasks(10);
Iterator<RunningTaskInfo> itr = runningTaskInfoList.iterator();
while(itr.hasNext()){
    RunningTaskInfo runningTaskInfo = (RunningTaskInfo)itr.next();
    int id = runningTaskInfo.id;
    CharSequence desc= runningTaskInfo.description;
    int numOfActivities = runningTaskInfo.numActivities;
    String topActivity = runningTaskInfo.topActivity.getShortClassName();
}

answered Nov 03 '11 at 09:32

Rajdeep Dua

11,190
2
32
22

4

This is not the same as the back stack - the back stack can involve multiple activities within the same task. I don't think there is a way to do what the OP is asking. – Michael Smith Jan 23 '12 at 23:11
2

Also this needs GET_TASK permission – Patrick May 22 '14 at 10:47
As of LOLLIPOP (sdk 21+) this is deprecated and only returns a very small subset of the information provided in former versions beacause of security reasons – Patrick Nov 25 '15 at 13:27
@for3st Does it return the info about the current app? – android developer Feb 27 '16 at 00:16

suresh · Answer 2 · 2015-01-09T12:22:54.860

4

You can use "adb shell dumpsys activity activities" command

for reference http://www.onsandroid.com/2015/01/find-back-stack-activities-in-android.html

edited Jan 09 '15 at 12:22

answered Jan 08 '15 at 13:25

suresh

123
2
6

I got the list of activities in the stack now how could I can kill? let suppose the 3rd activity in the stack – Anas Reza Sep 15 '15 at 08:06

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 20 '15 at 12:12

As getRunningTasks(..) has been deprecated or if you don't want to add special permissions to your app here is an alternative solution if all activities are yours: you can mark an identifier (not the activity itself is it may be in need to be garbage collected) in a singleton Stack, LinkedList or LinkedHashSet: in onPause() add the identifier to the stack and remove it in onResume().

You can check the contents of that stacks to know if there is any activity and the sequence they have been created.

You can clean up your code and forget to do that manually if all your activities derive from a common base activity for your app.

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 11 '20 at 11:46

1

I recommend you to utilize startActivityForResult instead of startActivity, then in order to retrieve the origin/source activity- call getCallingActivity().getClassName().

How will A know it came from home? Use getIntent() its

getAction() -> android.intent.action.MAIN

and

getCategories() -> android.intent.category.LAUNCHER

edited Jun 11 '20 at 11:46

Krishna Sony

1,286
13
27

answered Aug 30 '15 at 01:30

Karan Bhandari

370
3
12

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 18 '17 at 09:37

I think you can do it by listening to the changes of the activities, via this API of registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks :

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Application.html#registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(android.app.Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks)

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks.html

This will help you to add to a stack of your own classes, and see the full state as you wish.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 21 '22 at 01:51

The most obvious answer would be keeping a reference somewhere safe like in a utility class as a static variables in certain order, like in a list, but this can be dangerous as it can lead to a memory leak, so make sure you manually handle it and dispose them when needed.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 03 '11 at 09:26

0

I'm not sure i get it well...You want to go back to the previous activity ? If so, finish the current activity you'll get back to the previous one.

answered Nov 03 '11 at 09:26

Quentin DOMMERC

876
1
8
24

i want to find that at activity E, i've navigated from A,B,C,D something like this – azzits Nov 03 '11 at 09:29
Okay then, Rajdeep Dua has the answer. :P – Quentin DOMMERC Nov 03 '11 at 09:40

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 29 '12 at 07:34

actually, you can get the task id from the runningtaskinfo using getRunningTasks and then, get the recenttaskinfo using getRecentTasks by compare the task id. now you can restart that activity using startactivity, with the baseintent in the recenttaskinfo.

How to find back stack activities in an android application?

8 Answers8

Linked